How to put the Motorola NVG589 in 'bridge mode' (or as close as you can).

Overview

Most people don't need advanced features that personally owned routers offer and will be just fine using the NVG589 and turning off their personally owned router. But if you're like me (and I know I am!) then you are probably reading this thread because you have ip cameras, personal clouds, photo servers, guest wifi, VPN's, xbox, QOS settings, et al. I have an ASUS RT-N66U , a VIP2250, and a wireless reciever with a WAP; but your settings should be similar.

The NVG589 does not have a simple 'Bridge mode' setting so you will need to get into weeds to get this working. I hope you're ready.

First Steps

Make sure you have a laptop or a computer that you can connect directly into the NVG589.

Unplug all ethernet cables from the NVG589 except for the one going into the aforementioned laptop.

Write down the MAC address of your personal router (the WAN MAC address if you see different ones for LAN and WAN)

Settings on the NVG589

Login to your NVG589 by going to 192.168.1.254

Go to 'Home Network' then 'Subnets & DHCP'. Your password is on the side of the modem.

If your 'Device IPv4 Address' is the same subnet as your local router, I suggest changing it. I changed mine to 192.169.2.254 but you can stick with whatever you like / need. My subnet Mask remains at 255.255.255.0

Change 'DHCPv4 Start Address' to 192.169.2.1 (or whatever your above Device IPv4 address is but with a 1 at the end instead of .254)

Change 'DHCPv4 End Address' to 192.169.2.5, Just a few more than the Start Address. We need these for any WAP extenders for wifi TV's. It's important that you only have the laptop plugged into the ethernet at this point.

Click 'SAVE' at the bottom.

Go to 'Home Network' then 'Wireless' and turn wireless off. You want to use the wifi on your own router right?

Go to 'Firewall' then ' 'Packet Filter'. Disable Packet Filters. Again, we want our router to do the work.

Make sure you don't have any of your own settings turned on in 'NAT/Gaming' (don't worry if you see 1 in there already that you can't delete).

Go to 'Firewall' then 'IP Passthrough'. For 'Default Server Internal Address', select or type in 192.169.2.1.

For 'Allocation Mode' select 'Passthrough' (I had to do it in this reverse order to be able to type for some reason)

For 'Passthrough Mode', select 'DHCPS-Fixed'

Type in the MAC address for your router under 'Manual Entry', lowercase is fine.

Click SAVE. It will tell you that it needs to reboot. Hang on for a minute.

Go to 'Firewall Advanced' at the top and turn everything OFF.

Near the top of your screen, you should see an option telling you to reboot the router. Go ahead and do this now. It takes about 2 minutes.

Personal Router Settings.

Unplug your laptop and plug in your personal router while the NVG589 reboots.

Plug your laptop into your personal router and login to it. For me, it was 192.168.1.1 (hence why I changed things above)

For the ASUS RT-N66U, I had to go to my WAN settings, then 'Internet Connection'.

Change 'WAN Connection Type' to 'Automatic IP'. This will give your personal router the external IP of the NVG589 and is the key to making this whole thing work. Some folks will have to manually enter in an IP and this can be found under the 'Broadband - Status' section of the NVG589 settings. If you don't have 'automatic IP' then I feel bad for you since you will have to manually change this every time your IP changes.

'Enable WAN', 'Enable NAT' and 'Enable UPnP' is all set to YES for me.

I recomend Setting your own DNS server. I use Google's but you use whatever you like. Google's is 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

'Account Setting - Authentication' is 'None'.

There are no Special requirements from ISP at the bottom.

Hit APPLY at the bottom and your router will reboot.

I also changed settings in my IPTV under LAN:

Profile was None.

Choose IPTV STB port, I set to LAN3 & LAN4. I plugged my U-Verse WAP for the wireless reciver into the NVG589 and I plugged the ethernet cable going to the VIP2250 into LAN3 on my personal router. I'm really not sure if this was necessary but I'm having 0 issues with this setup. I initially tried putting the WAP on my personal router but had issues so I stuck it back on the NVG589 and it's fine. I could probably just plug the VIP2250 into the NVG589 as well but I'm just enjoying the small victory of using my personal router for now.

Hit apply at the bottom, another possible reboot.

At this point, I checked the internet and everything was working great through the router. I restarted by 2 TV boxes (the VIP and the wifi ones). Everything is peachy.

Re: How to put the Motorola NVG589 in 'bridge mode' (or as close as you can).

Re: How to put the Motorola NVG589 in 'bridge mode' (or as close as you can).

You have to change Allocation Mode before you can proceed with any other field on this screen. If you choose Passthrough, then it will stay disabled. If you choose Default Server, then you could fill it in, but that's not the way I would configure it. Here's a sample setup:

Award for Community Excellence 2019 Achiever**The views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.

Re: How to put the Motorola NVG589 in 'bridge mode' (or as close as you can).

I have mine setup in full manual, which is another way to do it.

On target router WAN interface, I specify a static connection, and enter IP, Subnet mask, default gateway and DNS. The first 3 are just cloned from the RG itself, and for DNS you can pick your favorite like quad 9 or google or even just the standard one from att.

This config survives the numerous RG restarts that happen due to frequent power grid interruptions. Which I've been meaning to talk to att about since it is my understanding VRADs are supposed to be on battery backup, and if true, there is a problem with the one in my neighborhood...

Award for Community Excellence 2019 Achiever**The views and opinions expressed on this forum are purely my own. Any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider, or party.

Re: How to put the Motorola NVG589 in 'bridge mode' (or as close as you can).

Re: How to put the Motorola NVG589 in 'bridge mode' (or as close as you can).

Just want to give kudos to the OP and David for the IP block update. I just had my service upgraded from 50 Mbps to 100 and I could not get my speeds to go past 45-55 on the actual desktop behind router. However at the modem I was hitting 105. I was using the OP's settings since first set my modem into pass through mode, but after using David's IP block and subset update suggestions now I am able to hit 90+ on my desktop. I m guessing 192.168.2.x might have caused some interference and slowed me down and 192.168.15.x works a lot better. Great job everyone!

Re: How to put the Motorola NVG589 in 'bridge mode' (or as close as you can).

I'm still having issues after trying several suggestions. AT&T installed the Internet 300 plan earlier this month. They installed the Arris BGW210-700 gateway. From the gateway diagnostics tab, I ran a speed test and was getting 300M up and down but something less than 100M up and down when I run a speed test to a test site (att.com/speedtest, speedtest.net. speakeasy.net, etc) from the back side of the gateway. (Just wondering to where the gateway diagnostic test is terminating. Was wondering if this is from the gateway to the place in the network where services is concentrated since this is a shared service. For me it's about a 1/4 down the street. Possible the slowdown is between that concentration point and the central office??)

I too have the ASUS RT-N66U behind the BGW210. I did get IP Pass-thru working and I use a 10.x.x.x IP range on my ASUS. I checked and my cable between the gateway and my router is a CAT5-E. I have a CAT6 ordered but I should be fine with CAT5E for 300M speeds. I set the AT&T gateway for IP Pass-thru, Wi-Fi off, packet filtering off and only my router connected to LAN1. My ASUS shows a WAN connection at 1G so I should be at least >100M.. Full disclosure, I am connected via 5GHz Wi-Fi as it's not convenient to direct connect but I should be able to get more than 60M which is my average speed test speed with no other devices. My CAT6 should be in this week so I'll see if that fixes anything. I'll report back if Yes.

Just seems like there is something slowing the bandwidth. Seems like different people do different things and get theirs running faster but the next guy does the same thing with no change. Really hoping someone figures this out as it appears to be an issue with the Arris and the Pace gateways.

Re: How to put the Motorola NVG589 in 'bridge mode' (or as close as you can).

OK, Installed the CAT6 cable between the BGW210-700 and my ASUS RT-N66U. Still getting <100M up and down. I didn't think the CAT6 would give me any more than the CAT5E I had but it was worth a try. My ASUS shows a 1G connection and IP Pass-thru is working as I have a public IP on my router. What am I doing wrong?

Re: How to put the Motorola NVG589 in 'bridge mode' (or as close as you can).

Thanks you very much @frostcall for the detailed instructions. I have an Arris BGW210-700 as the modem + router and not the NVG589 mentioned in the post for 300mbps AT&T fiber. I got it at the beginning of this year. Some of my devices were getting disconnected frequently. Especially the Tablo Tuner. With Tablo Tuner I was not sure whether it was the OTA signal or the wifi issues. Anyway I was having issues with other devices on the wifi network as well. So, I decided to used my own router under which wifi was working fine.

Initially, I could not get the connection to work. I got the public ip address briefly on my routher - Linksys WRT1200AC running OpenWrt. Then it disappeared subsequently.I abandoned the exercise at that point and leave it for another day.

But on another day, when I had some time, I decided to be patient and follow the entire procedure from scratch.

I reset the BGW210-700 through Diagonsitics>Reset menu. I also reset my OpenWrt router. Then I followed your instructions ditto as given in the above post. And just in less than half hour, I now have my router doing all the wifi and DHCP. And with that, all my problems seem to have gone away. It's been a few days and it's working fine. Hopefully it stays that way.

My recommendation to anybody will be if you can afford the time, it probably better to reset and start from scratch.